Arcadia (play)
Arcadia is a 1993 stage play written by English playwright Tom Stoppard, which explores the relationship between past and present, order and disorder, certainty and uncertainty.In the present, writer Hannah Jarvis and literature professor Bernard Nightingale converge on the house: she is investigating a hermit who once lived on the grounds; he is researching a mysterious chapter in the life of Byron.As their studies unfold – with the help of Valentine Coverly, a post-graduate student in mathematical biology – the truth about what happened in Thomasina's time is gradually revealed.Septimus Hodge is trying to distract 13-year-old Thomasina from her curiosity about "carnal embrace" by challenging her to prove Fermat's Last Theorem; he also wants to focus on reading the poem "The Couch of Eros" by Ezra Chater, who with his wife is a guest at the house.Thomasina starts asking why jam mixed in rice pudding can never be unstirred, which leads her to the topic of determinism and to a beginning theory about chaotic shapes in nature.When Hannah and Valentine challenge his logic, Bernard launches into a diatribe about the irrelevance of science, then departs for his lecture (and a promotional media appearance) in London.Hannah begins to suspect that the hermit of Sidley Park – who was reportedly obsessed with algebraic computations about the heat death of the universe, the theory suggested in Thomasina's diagram – could have been Septimus.Lady Croom enters, complaining to Noakes about the noise of his steam engine; Thomasina notes that the machine obeys the laws of entropy (which have not yet been formalized), which describe the universe as winding down.While Septimus awaits appropriate music for Thomasina's dance lesson, he examines the sketch she made to illustrate the irreversibility of heat; his action mirrors that of Hannah and Valentine, who pondered the same diagram."[7][8] Besides chaos, the play attends to a wide array of subjects, including thermodynamics, computer algorithms, fractals, population dynamics, determinism (especially in the context of love and death), classics, landscape design, Romanticism vs.A parallel dichotomy is expressed by Septimus and Thomasina: He instructs her in the Newtonian vision of the universe, while she keeps posing questions and proposing theories that undercut it.Thomasina's insights into thermodynamics and heat transfer, and the idea that the universe is cooling, echo the poem "Darkness" by her "real life" contemporary, Lord Byron.The play's end brings all these dichotomous themes together, showing that while things may appear to contradict – Romanticism and Classicism, intuition and logic, thought and feeling – they can exist, paradoxically, in the same time and space.Jim Hunter writes that Arcadia is a relatively realistic play, compared to Stoppard's other works, though the realism is "much enhanced and teased about by the alternation of two eras".[6] But Bernard consciously assumes some stylisation of language: He rehearses his public lecture in heightened, flamboyant rhetoric;[17] and he unleashes a polemic against Valentine's scientific thought (describing the concept as no more than "performance art"), not from spite but for "recreation".[18][19] The play's scientific concepts are set forth primarily in the historical scenes, where Thomasina delivers her precocious (or even anachronistic) references to entropy, the deterministic universe and iterated equations in improvised, colloquial terms.[9] In the modern era, Valentine explains the significance of Thomasina's rediscovered notebook with careful detail, reflecting Stoppard's research into his play's scientific materials."[23] The difference is significant: Chloe's intuitive version allows for the effects of chaos, illustrating Stoppard's theme of the interdependence of science and art, and between professional and amateur thinking.[28] Although these brief exchanges are the only direct references in the play to its title, they presage the two main characters' fates: Thomasina's early death, and Septimus's voluntary exile from life.[25] Stoppard originally wanted to make this connection more explicit by using Et in Arcadia Ego for the title, but "box office sense prevailed".[25] In a more obvious sense, the title also invokes the ideal of nature as an ordered paradise, while the estate's landscape steadily evolves into a more irregular form.Paul Edwards, in his essay "Science in Hapgood and Arcadia", notes that "chaos mathematics is about the recovery of information from apparently chaotic and random systems where entropy is high.[33] Among other parallels, the older work takes the theory of affinity between chemical elements as a metaphor for ineluctable, inevitable "human chemistry" in the same way as Stoppard makes use of the force of determinism acting on his characters.[34][35] A feature of both works is the preoccupation with remodelling country house landscapes; Goethe's young character "Ottilie" (the counterpart to Thomasina) dies as an indirect result of this.It starred Billy Crudup as Septimus, Blair Brown as Hannah, Victor Garber as Bernard, Robert Sean Leonard as Valentine and Jennifer Dundas as Thomasina.The other actors were Lisa Banes (Lady Croom), Richard Clarke (Jellaby), John Griffin (Gus/Augustus), Peter Maloney (Noakes), David Manis (Captain Brice, RN) and Haviland Morris (Chloe).[49] The book review website The Pequod rated the play a 10.0 (out of 10.0), saying "Arcadia combines an astonishing range of disparate elements — romance, humor, tragedy, sorrow, scientific history, and even gardening — into an entirely unique work of art.Ben Brantley of The New York Times called the production "a half-terrific revival of Mr. Stoppard's entirely terrific Arcadia", noting that "several central roles are slightly miscast", and "some of the performances from the Anglo-American cast are pitched to the point of incoherence.
Tom StoppardRoyal National TheatreComedy-dramaDerbyshirecountry estatestage playRoyal Institution of Great Britainbest science-related worksLord Byronhermit who once lived on the groundsmathematical biologycarnal embraceFermat's Last Theoremrice puddingdeterminismLandscape architectRomanticpopulation biologygrousebotanistthe destruction of the Alexandrian Libraryprimeriterationchaos theoryheat death of the universeWest Indiesparamourrabbit huntingrabbit piefancy dressentropysteam engineformalizeduniverseirreversibility of heatNewtonsecond law of thermodynamicsAda LovelaceCharles BabbageAnalytical enginepoetasterMartiniqueLady Caroline LambhermittragedyepigrammaticphysicsJames Gleickthermodynamicsalgorithmsfractalspopulation dynamicsclassicslandscape designRomanticismClassicismEnglish literatureperiodicalsacademiabotanyepistemologynihilismmadnessBath Spa UniversityNewtonian equationsDarknessYear Without a SummerMount TamboraDutch East Indiesrealisticcomprehensibleplottingcolloquialismsregisterdeterministic universeiterated equationsEt in Arcadia egoNicolas PoussinGuercino's paintingmemento morientropic declineclassical physicsdynamic systemsNewton's laws of motionarrow of timeJoseph FourierFourier transformGoetheElective AffinitiesJames McMullanLincoln CenterTrevor NunnRufus SewellFelicity KendalBill NighyEmma FieldingSidney LivingstoneHarriet WalterTimothy MatthewsSamuel WestOlivierEvening Standard AwardsVivian Beaumont TheaterBilly CrudupBlair BrownVictor GarberRobert Sean LeonardJennifer DundasPaul GiamattiLisa BanesHaviland MorrisNew York Drama Critics' CircleTony AwardTerrence McNallyLove! Valour! Compassion!Arena StageDavid LeveauxDuke of York's TheatreDan StevensSamantha BondJessie CaveNancy CarrollTrevor CooperSam CoxLucy GriffithsHugh Mitchell